Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine

Abstract

Mankind's battle to stay alive and healthy for as long as possible is our oldest, most universal struggle. With his characteristic wit and vastly informed historical scope, Roy Porter examines the war fought between disease and doctors on the battleground of the flesh from ancient times to the present. He explores the many ingenious ways in which we have attempted to overcome disease through the ages; the changing role of doctors, from ancient healers, apothecaries and blood-letters to today's professionals; the array of drugs, from Ayurvedic remedies to the launch of Viagra; the advances of surgery, from amputations performed by barbers without anaesthetic to today's sophisticated transplants; and the transformation of hospitals from Christian places of convalescence to modern medical powerhouses. Illustrated with historic line drawings, the chronic ailments of humanity provide anecdotes for Porter's story of medicine's efforts to prevail over a formidable and ever-changing adversary.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 181 citations exist upstream.